Albers Vista Gardens

Albers Vista Gardens was created to preserve, enhance, and aesthetically display a collection of unique, botanically diverse plants adapted to the Puget Sound region to demonstrate plant diversity, sustainable landscape best practices, and environmental stewardship. The setting is a beautiful 4.2 acre southwest facing slope in Bremerton, which has a saltwater view of the Port Washington Narrows and Phinney Bay and the surrounding hillsides; the view is framed by the Olympic Mountains to the west and a vista of Mount Rainer to the southeast. Nestled into the hillside is a striking new building housing a horticulture library and meeting room ideal for gardening workshops. The gardens are comprised of fifteen different rooms including a pristine native woodland containing mature madrone and bigleaf maple trees, a woodland garden designed to house a special collection of rhododendrons and companion plants, a majestic California Redwood surrounded by drought-tolerant and deer-resistant perennials and scrubs, a Stroll Gallery that features plants from all over the world, and Sam’s Conifer Reserve featuring many unique dwarf conifers. Examples of special collections include over 400 cultivars of conifers, over 100 cultivars of heaths and heathers, and over 70 different maples. This urban botanical oasis offers horticultural education and outdoor research opportunities.

Albers Vista Gardens
124 NE 31st St.
Bremerton, WA 98310

Visit their website at www.albersvistagardens.org.

Photos courtesy David E. Perry

Over the past 20 years Albers Vista Gardens has been created and sustained by Dr. John Albers with his wife Santica Marcovina as his inspiration. How wonderful to view the Olympic Mountains as well as Mount Rainier and the surrounding Puget Sound waters as one strolls throughout these sustainable gardens amongst our ever growing urban spaces. I have enjoyed touring, providing meetings and attending workshops since their Foundation was formed in 2007.

Patty Lent, past Bremerton Mayor, Bremerton garden club president

I’ve wandered the paths of this stunning garden, again and again over the past eight years, trying to capture all of its moods and magic, in every season, from first light to last and I have never ceased to be filled with awe and wonder at how a garden can be in such intimate conversation with the land it occupies, the madrona woods behind it, the Olympics to the west, Puget Sound, below and Mt. Rainier to the southeast. I always come away with beautiful images …and several pleasant surprises.

David E. Perry, photographer

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